


a glowing engine / timed to blow

by lonelyghosts



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Mexican Dave Strider, The Homestuck Epilogues: Candy, Trans Aradia Megido, Trans Dave Strider, bc this is for dia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24665263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: The first time they meet, it's in a dreambubble.
Relationships: Aradia Megido & Dave Strider, Aradia Megido/Dave Strider
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	a glowing engine / timed to blow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whichoftime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichoftime/gifts).



> this is for diamond i love you happy birthday <3 
> 
> you can read this as romantic aradave or more platonic either way works. also contains some of my Opinions on candy timeline and how i think that alt callie has been fucking things up

The first time they meet, it's in a dreambubble. 

He's so small, Aradia thinks, looking at him. He's shorter than her, his chest just beginning to grow in the way that hers never will, and there are scars all over his arms. His skin is brown and his hair is blonde, though there is dark at the roots that grow; hair dye. She recognizes it from Terezi, who dumps that shit over her head every other week; she's caught Terezi guzzling it, too, though she is positive it's not supposed to be drunk.

He postures a lot, snarks at her in deadpan, but Aradia was friends with Vriska and Kanaya. Neither of those things faze her anymore. Not much does.

He doesn't know much. Aradia can sympathize. So much of her discoveries about her Aspect came by mistake or surprise, the last scraps of knowledge that her doomed selves could salvage from the timeline and pass on to her. Back then she was a robot, of course, so cataloguing it was relatively easy. The fact that those discoveries were soaked in blood didn't bother her; it was worse on Alternia, anyways. At least here the violence meant something. 

But from what she knows of Earth she thinks it's not the same. And this boy, who she's watched over in silence for some time, she would spare him the hard parts if she could. Make it easier, at least.

It's already been hard for him, she can see that. He's died so many times already. The lingering temporal echoes surround him, drenched in blood. The sounds beat in her ears like the lowblood songs she and Tavros used to hum along to together, a cacophony of joyous morbid noise that makes her fingers twitch. 

Aradia never had anyone who could make it easier for her. She went through it alone, struggling through the muck of it all, waiting and wondering and experimenting, trying her best. She does not want this for him- the flailing that ends in death.

So she smiles, and reaches out her hand.

* * *

Now it's different.

Aradia floats next to the possessed body of Jade Harley, and for once she is not wandering.

For her it so often comes to that; ruins, first, on Alternia, looking to salvage the remnants of rustblood culture that were so often vandalized or overlooked by the archorrorlogists, the precious little scraps that were left. It was how she discovered the patchwork art of a woman with her sign in a green dress, a woman with her long curling horns. 

Then in the Game, wandering the Lands and wandering the timelines with the copies of herself, waiting for information. That had been a slow and less enjoyable wandering; a deadly drudgery that had dragged on and had broken relationships apart, in the end. She wonders, sometimes, if she could have done better. If she'd tried harder, if she'd done more. 

Then the dreambubbles, of course. Aradia told Dave that she was alive and she was going to stay that way, but still; she'd spent so long among ghosts. She's not even really sure anymore what it means to be alive anymore. If her strange and hollow existence even counts.

The last place she wandered was canon, watching the mess that Dirk Strider and Alternate Calliope have created of these timelines. She can see Dirk's twisting pulling on thoughts and selves, the way he whispers into Rosebot's ear and leaves orange handprints along Jane's mind, forcing the world into a conflict that feels doomed from the start. Theseus burning through the sky, and she wonders how it will end. Poorly, she suspects. 

She can see the marks of interference where Alt Callie has forced people into fitting roles that weren't meant for them, mangled their bodies into caricatures that don't match who they are. Rose and Roxy bear those marks especially, and Aradia pities them. No matter her dysphoria, she has never wanted to be transformed into a cis woman. She suspects that neither Rose nor Roxy wanted that either, but Alt Callie is just as much a condescending god as Dirk. She would not ask.

Aradia says none of this to Jade Harley. She knows her strength, and as powerful as a fully ascended Maid of Time is, it is nothing compared to the girl-cherub standing next to her. The blood drips off Jade's teeth and the yawning red haze crackles before them. It is silent.

When the redness coalesces into Dave Strider she is not surprised, but she still flinches internally from the gleaming silver of his body. The more she looks at it the more sick she feels; the flatness of his chest reminds her of the bumps that Equius had put on her chassis, an unwilling gift she hadn't been able to say no to. She wonders if it was the same for Dave- did he get to ask? Does he even care? She hadn't been able to. She doubts that Dave had been, either.

She looks at his face, instead, and unlike anyone else who has ever known Dave Strider, she is grateful for the shades that block his eyes. At least she can pretend there is life behind them, this way, instead of the empty red pits that she knows must be blinking behind those aviators. 

Aradia pities him. Down to the bottoms of her bones she pities him; looking at Dave Strider now is like looking in a mirror of her younger self and she's never hated him more, even as she wants to beg him to think of what he's doing. Even as she wants to tell him that he is not free, even as she wants to pull the soul of him out of his body and into her own, where she can keep him safe from the imitation of her own failures. She hates him for not knowing better.

Neither of them seem to notice the way she hurts to look at him. The girl-cherub stays silent and Dave rambles a little- at least this body hasn't taken that from him. He finally asks if she's coming with them, and despite all of the twisted hurt balled up inside her chest, she doesn't hesitate before saying yes.

Aradia Megido has been trying to guide and protect Dave Strider ever since they met. She's not going to stop now. 


End file.
